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World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.
Gore Vidal
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Gore Vidal
Age: 86 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 3
Died: 2012
Died: July 31
Actor
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
West Point
New York
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Gor Vidal
Cameron Kay
Eugene Luther Vidal
Edgar Box
Katherine Everard
Eugene Vidal
Work
Casual
World
Motive
Individuals
Whose
Events
Individual
Often
Frivolous
Even
Motives
More quotes by Gore Vidal
One of the most fascinating aspects of politician-watching is trying to determine to what extent any politician believes what he says.
Gore Vidal
Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.
Gore Vidal
In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
Gore Vidal
There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.
Gore Vidal
Since nothing is free, to each his price.
Gore Vidal
Never have varmints, only grandvarmints.
Gore Vidal
The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
Gore Vidal
A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country.
Gore Vidal
Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.
Gore Vidal
We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.
Gore Vidal
For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.
Gore Vidal
The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
Gore Vidal
Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.
Gore Vidal
People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.
Gore Vidal
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
Gore Vidal
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal
People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.
Gore Vidal
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.
Gore Vidal
Nothing human is finally calculable even to ourselves we are strange.
Gore Vidal
You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.
Gore Vidal
